Facebook while black: Users call it getting 'Zucked,' say talking about racism is censored as hate speech

Black activists say hate speech policies and content moderation systems formulated by a company built by and dominated by white men fail the very people Facebook claims it's trying to protect. Not only are the voices of marginalized groups disproportionately stifled, Facebook rarely takes action on repeated reports of racial slurs, violent threats and harassment campaigns targeting black users, they say. Many of these users now think twice before posting updates on Facebook or they limit how widely their posts are shared. Yet few can afford to leave the single-largest and most powerful social media platform for sharing information and creating community. So to avoid being flagged, they use digital slang such as "wypipo," emojis or hashtags to elude Facebook's computer algorithms and content moderators. They operate under aliases and maintain back-up accounts to avoid losing content and access to their community. And they've developed a buddy system to alert friends and followers when a fellow black activist has been sent to Facebook jail, sharing the news of the suspension and the posts that put them there. They call it getting "Zucked" and black activists say these bans have serious repercussions, not just cutting people off from their friends and family for hours, days or weeks at a time, but often from the Facebook pages they operate for their small businesses and nonprofits.